


Trailblazer

by loudle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Dementia, Hospitalization, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:34:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5278634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudle/pseuds/loudle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>harry is made of galaxies and louis is just a star; most stars are dead, you know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trailblazer

Louis opened his eyes to the sun blinding him and casting rainbows across his dingy cream walls. They were once a bright white, but from accumulated dust that he had not found the time or energy to clean since he had squeezed his entire life into this tiny flat those three years ago, the paint had long faded. The reflection of the sunlight sparkled and separated into the spectrum of all colors unto the dusty canvas. He absently wondered why he could only see color through glass prisms or water droplets. Color didn't exist for him outside of infractions of glass or sunshowers. He was reminded of his sadness and the effects were imminent. He shut his eyes and wished for sleep to free him from such a hell, but to no avail; he was captured as prisoner to the forthcoming day.

He dragged himself out of bed and into the bathroom. In the mirror he saw scrambled lines and blurry edges. His eyes dripped sad blue lines down his cheeks like the tired goo in an old lava lamp and he felt empty. He was a 1970s novelty item: sad, used, and out-of-date. He wished that he could glow. What was a lamp without a glow? Useless; he was useless.

Brushing his teeth was futile because he could only scrape the top layers of filth from his gums; the residue of his sad existence that had built up over all the days before the last 24 hours remained. He felt sick to his stomach so he dry heaved into the sink for three and a half minutes, but nothing ever came. Lines stayed scrambled and edges further blurred in his eternally compromised vision. There was enough time between now and 9 am to get dressed, eat breakfast, and still get to work on time. However, he had no appetite this morning (or any morning for that matter), and only enough energy to do one of these things. He figured that putting on clothes was more important in the scheme of keeping his middle class office job, so he stuck with that plan. No plans ever really worked out for him, he realized. His sadness again became a thought to be pondered, and this time when he heaved into the sink, acid burned his throat as it escaped the confines of his body.

As he waited for the bus to take him where he needed to go, Louis noticed a woman stood next to him on line that had eyes spread so far apart that she resembled a fish. She looked like a sad fish, Louis thought, but he said nothing. He wondered briefly if it was hard for her to breathe out of water. For him, it was hard to breathe either way.

Today was going to be a good day, or so Louis thought, because his bus was always the most crowded one at this time of the morning, and he actually got a seat. His hopes were leveled with the sea when the side mirror of the bus shined the sun directly into his eyes, blinding him and causing rainbows to form behind his eyelids. Colors only existed when Louis didn't want them to; he wished that it was raining.

As this thought entered his head, the sun came out for the second time today. Somehow, he went from hating the glaring light to welcoming the warm haze into his life. It was the moment that an uncharacteristically small orange squash tumbled from a paper bag into his lap and he looked up that he realized that God was real- he was the one holding the bag.

"I'm sorry," a rumbling voice reached out and curled around his better judgment like cigarette smoke, "did I squish you with my squash?" Louis wasn't sure if he should be as charmed as he was. The lopsided grin on the angel's rose petal lips and the loose chocolate curls that spilled around his alabaster face with dimples poked into either cheek led him to believe that he was perfectly fine as a puddle at the gentle giant's feet.

"No," he shook his head with his soft reply, handing the small vegetable back to the lanky man. His massive hand swallowed it whole, and Louis didn't notice. The bus did get a little warmer, though.

"May I sit beside you after such a rude entrance?," he requested Louis's permission, who felt his broken heart splintering.

"You may," he nodded his permission and the doll of a man graciously lowered himself into the plastic seat. "You look like a Disney Prince," Louis blurted out involuntarily, and he would have regretted it if the man's eyes didn't crinkle at the edges with the face-splitting grin that such an outburst caused. He truly was the sun, and Louis could bask in his radiance for all of eternity. He neglected to acknowledge that he didn't even know his name.

"Well I know you," he countered, leaning in to bump his shoulder against Louis's, "I rode the bus with you once upon a dream." Louis looked into his eyes and he saw a spectrum of bright greens and shades of gold fluttering across his irises like the wings of monarch butterflies. Color only existed for him through prisms of glass and water droplets, but neither was present. Prince Charming was a rainbow without a cause- a universe of color and vibrancy without any reason to be other than to simply be alive. Louis wanted to feel that buoyancy.

"What's your name?," he asked and the boy with gems for eyes sparkled in his own light.

"Harry," he said as a piece of hair fell into his eyes. He pouted so his lower lip puffed out like a bubble of pink chewing gum, and Louis wanted to taste. It looked like it would be flavored with strawberry, the kind that makes your mouth water even when it's on your tongue- you just can't ever get enough. He attempted to blow the strand out of his eyes but failed. His large hands were splayed around his bags of groceries protectively, so Louis did something outwardly dangerous. He reached out and tucked the piece of hair into place and felt Harry's intense gaze lock on his face as he did so.

"Figures," he murmured under his breath, allowing his fingers to stroke through the silky curls for a moment too long before returning his small hands to the home base of his lap.

"What figures?," Harry asked him, catching his eyes that were drained of color but not of uncertainty.

"That you share a name with a prince," he replied to which Harry laughed loudly. Louis blinked in surprise but could not help to notice the switch turn on inside of himself. He was a lava lamp that had found its glow. Harry was filled with so much light that even a small conversation could transfer thousands of watts to one's fingertips. Louis felt privileged to know him, even if only for a few minutes.

"You're a cheeky one, aren't you?," Harry shook his head, a fond smile staying on his lips. The monarch butterflies flew from the embers in his eyes to flutter in Louis's stomach.

"Dunno, just not very good at being subtle," he said truthfully and Harry looked at him like he was the most interesting person on Earth.

"And what's your name?," he asked and Louis swallowed the fragile golden wings that tried to take flight from the pit of his gut.

"Louis," he said with a small smile and Harry snorted.

"Figures," he said, rolling his eyes. Louis frowned; he didn't like when the prince didn't wear his fond smile, now that he knew of its beauty.

"What figures?," he inquired and Harry tried to conceal his charming grin, but it broke free across his dimpled face.

"That you share a name with a king," he said with a wink, and Louis felt himself lifting from his seat as a million butterflies spread their wings to the racing beat of his heart. "Actually 18 kings, if I'm not mistaken," he added thoughtfully, furrowing his brow.

"You're not mistaken," Louis assured him. "There were 18 kings who shared my name.”

"That's not right," Harry shook his head and Louis raised a brow. He double majored in history and English- he was fairly certain that there were 18 king Louis's of France.

"What do you mean?," he requested an explanation and Harry leant his cheek against a zucchini that peeked out from the top of one of his bags.

"There were 18 previous king Louis's," he said, low voice drawling out his words as slow as molasses, "and you make 19." Louis felt a blush burn through his cheeks as he hid his bashful smile with a shake of the head.

"You're _terrible_ ," he chided softly and Harry only smiled more widely.

"Terrible enough to take you out sometime?," he asked hopefully, suddenly seeming so fragile in the nervous knit of his brow and unsure angle of his grin. He hid behind an assumed confidence that made Louis's heart pound thousands of times as hard against the cage of his ribs. He wanted to feel the blood pump through his veins and be reminded of his vitality instead of how each heartbeat carried him closer to his inevitable demise.

"Perhaps just insufferable enough," he accepted the invitation, to which Harry beamed even brighter. How could one be brighter than the sun? Louis didn't know, but Harry had accomplished the impossible right before his eyes.

"Good," he said, balancing his bags on his slim thighs and pressing them to his chest with one large hand. He reached back and retrieved his phone from the back pocket of the sinfully tight jeans that he sported on his lean legs with his free hand. The huge rose gold iPhone 6+ looked like an average sized phone in his huge hand, and Louis tried to ignore that as he folded his hands over the crotch of his pants. "What is your number, King Louis the 19th?" Louis recited his phone number to Harry, who, to his delight, really set his contact name as _King Louis XIX_. "You do know what you've just gotten yourself into, don't you?," Harry said, sliding his phone back into his pocket and regaining stability with both hands around his groceries.

"What's that?," Louis asked.

"Links to BuzzFeed quizzes and videos of cats trying to play musical instruments," Harry replied and Louis couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up from the bottom of his champagne heart. He was drunk on Prince Harry.

"Oh, how _tragic_ ," he feigned distress, back of the hand pressed against his forehead. He felt like a teenager with a crush when his heart sank as Harry pressed the button to signal for his stop.

"You've gotten yourself into this mess, Lou," he said, standing up from the blue plastic chair. "There's no way out, either. Gotta let me wine and dine you whether you like it or not.”

"Ugh, what a drag," Louis tried not to preen at the nickname assigned to him.

"Unfortunately for you," Harry said as the old bus screeched to an agonizing halt, "I am a late night texter. I hope you're awake and ready for cat videos at three in the morning.”

"I'm dreading it," Louis teased as Harry retreated through the aisle and down the worn steps out onto the pavement of the more hipster part of town. Louis looked at him through the window and waved to which Harry stuck his tongue out to blow a raspberry that Louis couldn't hear through the glass. He blew one back nonetheless to earn a cheeky grin from the other man. It wasn't until the doors had closed and they were pulling away from the curb that Louis realized this was four stops past where he needed to be and he had ten minutes to get to work on time.

He was reminded of the cage he lived in that was the structural setup of his mortal life. For once, instead of focusing on the wrought iron bars that curled around his very existence, he was reminded that he was a bird. Harry made him want to fly higher than the butterflies that lived in the gold flecks of his eyes and made a nest in Louis's belly, and that was quite high, even for a creature of the sky.

 

***

 

It had been three days since the human embodiment of the sun had shed light on him. Just as quickly as he had grown like a flower in the cracks of weathered pavement, he shriveled like a perennial blossom as winter stole the sun from the sky. He was walking through a field of nettles that stung his exposed ankles and left blisters on his flesh that could not be seen by the naked eye. His wounds were deeper than that, running beneath his skin like barbed wire atop cemetery gates.

It was 2:13 am, the bathroom mirror was glorified tinfoil, and the paint was peeling off the walls too slowly. Louis's phone lit up on his bed to which he frowned, puzzled. He did not have many callers, and the ones he did normally did not try to reach him at such strange times of the night. When he picked up his phone, the message was from an unfamiliar number.

"King Louis XIX?," the person questioned, and the butterflies rose from the dust sprinkles evenly around his room.

"Prince Harry?," he replied. The number began texting back immediately and Louis felt his heart stutter at the meaningless gesture.

"But of course," he said, and Louis smiled fondly at the screen, able to hear the low grain of the voice in his mind. "Are you busy?," was the question that followed. Louis furrowed his brow in faint confusion.

"Not very, though it's 2:15 in the morning," he typed back, "not sure what you had in mind.”

"You." Louis made a face as if Harry could sense his bafflement.

"What about me?," he pressed for clarification.

"I had you in mind." _Oh._

"Oh," Louis responded.

"Not like that, you perv," Harry scolded him over text. "I meant that I was thinking about you in a chaste way, like your eyes or your smile. Christ." Louis giggled at that, scrunching his nose, not letting go of the fact that Harry admitted to thinking about his eyes and his smile. His heart soared.

"I'm sorry for doubting you! Men are most often pigs, sue me," he replied.

"You're a man yourself, you know," Harry countered.

"But you said it yourself, I am a king among men," Louis found confidence in Harry's excess shine.

"I'm not quite sure I worded it that way," he admitted.

"Am I not King Louis XIX?," he summoned a confession.

"You are," Harry provided.

"Therefore, I am a king among men! Case closed.”

"You really are something else," Harry said, and Louis could almost hear his low chuckle. He didn't even feel pathetic when his heart raced at the thought. Before he could respond, Harry sent him a link. It was an hour and nine minutes later when he found himself six minutes into a 14 minute video of a cat playing the saxophone and having taken three quizzes Harry had forwarded him (if he was a song off Adele's new album, he'd be "Million Years Ago") that it dawned on him how hopeless he was. It was funny that Harry dubbed him King Louis XIX, because he was royally fucked.

 

***

 

Louis woke up too early for a Saturday. The sun was hidden behind pale gray clouds, the naked branches of trees reaching out with twisted knotty arms in attempt to pull it back to the forefront. He watched their hopeless procession and understood what it was like to be a tree.

It was Saturday, so he was to call his mum; there was a sticky note beside the calendar that had a picture of a coyote for the month that told him to do so. He reached for his phone but it wasn't on the side table. He could not remember where he had put his phone after speaking to Harry last night, and that ate at him something terrible. He hated misplacing things and he found himself doing it quite a lot these days. He detached himself from the anchor of his bed and turned the entire flat upside down to no avail, for his phone was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until 43 minutes had passed and he craved a glass of orange juice did he find it on the top shelf of the refrigerator door stood upright between the condiments. Why did he put it there? A quiet feeling of dread crept up and swallowed the light from the room. He suppressed the idea and threw his action to a cluttered mind. The memory washed over him that he was supposed to call someone. He looked in through the doorway to the next room at the creased green post-it next to the sad coyote on a calendar of days that were so very numbered. He tried to read what it said but the words just blurred together in a jumble of angry lines scribbled into a pattern he couldn't decipher. There used to be words there, but all he could see were black teardrops staining the paper with mindless inkblots. Who was he supposed to call? He looked at his phone and the last person who texted him was Harry, so he called him.

"Hello?," his gravelly voice rumbled through the earpiece. Louis's breath hitched in his throat.

"Hi," he said, tracing his fingers over a peeling strip of wallpaper in his postage stamp of a kitchen.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Your Highness?," Harry said in an assumed posh accent that made Louis giggle.

"Dunno," Louis admitted. "I had to call someone, so I called you.”

"Is everything alright?," Harry's voice sounded concerned, and Louis's heart felt like lead in his chest. He hated feeling pitied.

"Everything is grand," he said as he squinted, trying to make sense of his shopping list that just named _milk_ 14 times down the page. "A whole slew of babies were born today, I reckon. Someone probably got married.”

"Two people just shared their first kiss," Harry added onto the list of reasons why today was a beautiful day. "A baby just said their first word.”

"Would you like to go to the park with me?," Louis asked him, a sudden turn in the conversation.

"I would very much like to do that," Harry agreed to the plan. "Did you want to go for a run, or..?," he trailed off.

"I just wanted to sit in the grass and talk about death," Louis admitted with a shrug, tearing the curling floral paper at the edge where it peeled.

"Sounds lovely," Harry confided. "Just give me a time, my noble king." Louis wasn't sure, but he thought that maybe this is what love was supposed to feel like. The butterflies fluttered from the pit of his stomach to tickle the strings of his heart.

He did not remember to call his mother that day.

 

***

 

"I don't want to be buried," Louis admitted as they stared up at the dreary sky from where they lay in the grass. "Going from living your entire life to rotting in a box in the ground seems like such an anticlimactic ending.”

"I don't know about that," Harry said, and Louis looked over at him. He was looking into the clouds as if he was searching for something, green eyes concentrated and eyelashes like branches of the sad trees outside his bedroom window reaching up with spindly arms. "We go from picking flowers to growing flowers. I think that's pretty wonderful.”

"You have a beautiful mind," Louis sighed, turning back to look up at the sky, "the kind that will live on long after you're dead.”

"I'm not sure that's possible," Harry said with a laugh, turning his face so that his cheek brushed against the rough strands of grass as he looked at Louis.

"It is," he insisted, turning to face him as well. "When people leave impressions, it's usually like a stick tracing words in the sand that will be swept away by the waves of the sea as soon as you turn your back. You, though- you press your hands into the minds of others like wet cement, and it stays there forever, unwarped and unpolluted. Then, everyone else walks past your handprints in the pavement and thinks about what they mean. You'll live forever, even after you die." They were both silent for a moment or two after that, Harry looking back up at the sky to think about what had just been said to him.

"You're quite beautiful, y'know," he said quietly, watching a cloud that looked like love drift across the sad sky. "Plus, if you weren't buried, how would you participate in the zombie apocalypse?" He had a point. Louis forgot that he was a dead man for a moment in the light of the sun.

 

***

 

Louis woke at 1:04 pm on Sunday. His heart sunk as he realized that he had missed Church. Mum would be so mad at him- except he was 23 and had moved out three years ago this past April. Right.

Almost on cue, his phone began to ring loudly throughout the apartment. Louis cringed, getting out of bed to locate the offending noise. He hadn't taken his medication in two days because he was due for a refill and didn't want to go back to the doctor. His phone was in his left shoe underneath the coffee table that he used as a footrest when _The Walking Dead_ was on. How many seasons had there been so far? His mother was ringing him.

"Mum?," he picked up the phone.

"Louis?," she called out as if she could not hear him. He looked at his phone which was turned upside down and corrected it.

"Hi, mum," he said into the receiver, plopping down onto the couch.

"Hello, my love," she spoke in her gentle voice. He often wished that his mother didn't live an hour and a half away; he wanted her to curl him up in a hug the way that her kind voice did through the phone. "How are we today?”

"Today is grand," he told her as he told anyone who ever asked. "A whole slew of babies have been born, I reckon. Someone probably just got married.”

"But how are _you_ feeling, darling?," she pressed gently and he made a face, picking at a hole in the knee of his old gray track pants.

"How am _I_ feeling?," he repeated and she hummed in affirmation. "I'm feeling like the coyote," he admitted.

"How does the coyote feel?," she mused her son.

"He feels nauseous," he informed her.

"Why does he feel nauseous, Lou?," she asked and her voice was soft like the existence of the color green.

"He can't remember being seven," he told her and she was silent over the line. "He forgot what it was like to be seven last week and he keeps trying but he can't recall. It makes him feel mighty nauseous.”

"Why didn't he call his mummy yesterday?," she asked and he thought for a moment.

"He didn't?," he asked and she sighed.

"No, he didn't," she replied. "Yesterday was Saturday.”

"Today is Sunday?," he asked.

"Today is Sunday," she confirmed.

"Today is grand," he reminded her.

"Have you taken your medication today, Loubear?”

"Need to get a refill," he told her.

"Would you please do me a favor and go get that refill? Please, baby?," she pleaded gently.

"I don't need it," he said, turning on the TV to a man speaking in fragmented howls and bursts of static. "I'm okay.”

"Did Dr. Rowe tell you that?," she asked and he sighed.

"No," he said begrudgingly.

"Then wouldn't it be best to check in with him before making that decision?," she asked, and he watched the news anchor's head separate like light through a prism of glass or water droplet, all the colors screaming at him and making him want to hide.

"I don't want to go back there," he said softly, and rain began to fall from the ceiling starting at his eyes. There must be a leak again.

"I know you don't," she said gently, and he could nearly feel her warm hands rubbing circles into his back, "but sometimes what's best for us isn't the easiest option.”

"I can see colors sometimes," he told her, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his ratty jumper to stop the leak.

"That's wonderful, baby," she congratulated him and he felt big. He felt like this was important, somehow. He felt like he mattered, a feeling only his mother could give him.

"I saw green yesterday," he told her.

"Sounds gorgeous, honey," she said and he hummed in agreement.

"It sparkles, to me."

 

***

 

Louis sat atop the padded table on the paper that crinkled under his bum. Dr. Rowe washed his hands for the third time since Louis had arrived. He didn't meet Louis's eyes which made him feel very small and nervous. The lines that separated the parts of the circulatory system faded into the poster on the wall and blood was everywhere. Everyone dies and life is one big massacre.

"I'm afraid I haven't any good news to share," the doctor said as if he cared very much about his patient's wellbeing.

"Is there any news at all, then?," Louis pretended to be optimistic as blood filled up his body and drowned him from the inside.

"Unfortunately, yes," Dr. Rowe sighed.

"If you haven't anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," Louis recited.

"Well, that's the problem, really," Rowe informed him, pulling up an x-ray of what seemed to be his brain. He filled his head with facts and figures he didn't understand, but Louis nodded along all the same. To conclude, "I still can't diagnose you. All I can say is that this is a sweeping illness. The most I can do is up your dosage to slow the erosion of your cerebral cortex," he told him.

"So I'm a dead man, then?," Louis deadpanned, feeling his body self-destructing.

"Not just yet, Mr. Tomlinson," he quickly rushed to assure him. "We are doing all that we can to find out what this beast is and fight it.”

"I can't remember being seven anymore," Louis admitted, taking the prescription slip from Dr. Rowe's hand. "I forgot how to spell _November_ last week," he continued. "My mother's name starts with J, but I can't remember the rest. She has two eyes, both the same color, but I don't know which. My childhood house is made up of two stories, but I don't remember any stairs," he spoke quietly as if the moment his voice rose above a whisper, his skin would shatter like glass and even more of his mind would seep through the cracks. "I only moved out three years ago, you know.”

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tomlinson," the doctor said quietly, and Louis was sure that he meant it. His existence was a sorry one, falling apart at the seams. He was a dead man walking, dying with each breath that he filtered through his sorry lungs.

He left the doctor's office, then, and threw the yellow slip into the bin on the corner. He would rather accept his mind tearing apart than pretend it was possible to keep stitching it back together.

 

***

 

"I would like to make a toast," Harry said, raising the can of whipped cream, "to you and the flowers that grow through the cracks in your skin." He pressed the nozzle and a small cloud appeared on his tongue and disappeared behind his velveteen lips. Louis wanted to kiss him.

"You make me feel like death is an old wives' tale and youth is like the stars: absolutely infinite,” he confided in his lover.

"If you kissed me, I wouldn't mind," Harry said then, spritzing whipped cream onto the tip of his index finger and outstretching his arm to allow Louis a taste. He sucked Harry's digit between his lips, causing something to flicker in his now dark eyes, green swallowed by the emptiness of his pupils.

"If I kissed you, I'm not sure I'd be able to stop there," Louis said around his finger before hollowing his cheeks and tasting the metallic tang of his rings. Harry moaned low in his throat, retrieving his finger and crawling between Louis's folded legs. His own lanky lower limbs wrapped around the smaller man's waist. Louis was breathless; he had never been this close to an angel before.

"If you kissed me," Harry said, dropping his head so that their foreheads pressed together, snaking his arms around Louis's neck, "I would let you go as far as you wanted to take me.”

So they sat there on the linoleum of Louis's kitchen floor, snogging like horny teenagers playing seven minutes in heaven. For some reason, Louis wasn't embarrassed to come untouched against the weight of Harry's bum on his crotch. He felt like a reckless teenager when Harry's eyes crinkled at the edges in his wake or light bent around him like the universe being created over again in a Big Bang.

He decided he wanted to stitch his mind back together if that meant he could remember the color green.

 

***

 

"Lou?," Harry's voice called out from the bedroom in fright as he heard a crash come from the kitchen. He rushed in and Louis's favorite mug was in seven different pieces on the hardwood floor, tea spilling everywhere. "What happened?”

"There's something wrong with the mugs," Louis said and Harry raised an eyebrow.

"With the mugs?”

"Yes," Louis nodded, crouching down to pick up the broken glass with his bare hands. He yelled when he cut his finger, looking down at his open skin in confusion. Why was he bleeding?

"Lou, let me get that," Harry said, ushering him out of the way gently. Two months had passed and Harry had a drawer of his things in Louis's room. How many months had they been together? Maybe three. "Babe, you've got to be more careful. You've broken, like, three cups this week," he said with a tone of light annoyance inflected in his voice. He didn't know that Louis was losing his mind.

"I'm bleeding," Louis said, and Harry turned from where he brushed the cracked remains of the mug into a dustpan. He put down the brush and pan immediately, taking Louis's hand in his own to inspect the damage.

"Aw, love," he sighed, watching as fresh beads of blood formed on his wound, "I'll get this later. Let's clean you up, yeah?," he said and Louis nodded. Harry guided him to the bathroom, running the tap and waiting for it to heat up. "This may sting," he warned his boyfriend whom allowed his wounded hand to be run under the warm water. Louis hissed at the contact, wincing as Harry held his hand in place under the stream.

"Harry, it _hurts_ ," he whined.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, turning off the water and patting his hand dry with a wad of toilet paper. "Do you think you can handle another little zing?," he asked and Louis narrowed his eyes.

"What kinda zing?”

"Hydrogen peroxide," he said, taking the bottle down from the medicine cabinet.

"Will it hurt?," he asked and Harry hesitated before answering.

"Just a bit more than the water," he said truthfully to which Louis began to pull his hand away, "but it will keep it from getting worse. Trust me, yeah?" Louis paused in his motion before giving in, nodding and slipping his hand back into Harry's palm. "Good boy," Harry coaxed him, unscrewing the cap from the bottle. "Are you ready? This will hurt a little," he warned Louis who screwed up his face in response, nodding for Harry to continue. Harry poured the liquid over his cut to which Louis cried out in pain. His open wound turned white under the chemical and Louis saw every color exploding behind his eyelids. He was brought back to a place of pain, gravel deep in the skin of his cheek where the other kids held his face down into the pavement at recess. He felt his mother's gentle hands picking rocks out of the dips in his skin and crying over the misery of her son's existence. He wanted to die all over again.

He remembered what it was like to be seven.

 

***

 

"I have good news," Dr. Rowe said cheerfully, looking down at his clipboard with a chipper smile. Louis cocked his head to the side.

" _Good_ news?," he questioned.

"You bet," his doctor affirmed. He hadn't heard those two words together in a sentence in quite a long time. "You seem to be getting better!”

"I do?," he asked, suddenly filled with hope.

"You do! The erosion of your cortex has all but halted," Rowe said, and Louis wasn't sure what that meant.

"What does that mean?," he asked.

"That means that if I didn't know of your extensive medical history, I could almost say that you're absolutely fine," the doctor told him. Louis felt the color green grow vines of ivy tightly around his blue heart. Hope was a rumor to him up until now; in this moment, he felt this twinkling feeling when thinking of a future for himself and the color green.

“I'll be okay?," he asked and the doctor didn't answer for a bit. He was perched on his stool across from where Louis sat on the old padded examination table, pen frozen in his hand at his patient's inquiry.

"Well, I can't say for certain," he began gently, making Louis's heart sink back to the bottom of the sea where it belonged, "but I can say-“

"Don't," Louis said in a low voice. "If I'm not going to get better, don't play with me.”

"You're never going to get back the pieces of your cortex that you've lost," the doctor told him. Louis felt the ivy wither away; he thought such a plant was evergreen. "The best I can give you is the idea that you can keep the pieces you still have at this moment. That's my good news.”

"Are you even certain of _that_?," Louis snapped. The doctor didn't answer. Black is the absence of all color and Louis had never felt darker inside. "Of course not." It was Saturday. He forgot to call his mother and when he was handed a yellow prescription slip, he couldn't read the scribbles that danced across the paper.

 

***

 

Louis looked up at the night sky from where he lay on the roof of his flat complex. Harry lay beside him, long fingers curled through the spaces of his own. "The sky is like a time machine," Louis said.

"How so?," Harry asked.

"Most stars that we see are dead," Louis said, tracing the lines of constellations with his eyes. "We are just now catching light of the explosion of stars that have long been dead, some thousands of years.”

"So the sky is just a graveyard of stars," Harry said. His signature buoyancy seemed to be wavering.

"Just like Earth is a graveyard of the hopeful," he said and Louis glanced over at him. Sometimes he thought that Harry was catching on.

"I have hope for you," Louis said after a long gap in the conversation.

"Did anyone ever have hope for _you_?”

If he only knew.

 

***

 

He was supposed to be getting better, but lights were blurry and voices were screams and loud buzzing noises in his ears, eating away at his mind until it exploded.

And it exploded.

In a burst of flames and party streamers of every color and hue in a rainbow shining through the shards of glass that made up his broken heart, he was a star collapsing in on himself in an explosion of blinding light before blacking out. He exploded on 14th street and woke up in a gray room with many machines that made angry beeping sounds to tell him that they were ashamed. He wanted to peel the skin off of his body.

Harry was there, which confused him. He had never been present when Louis was in the hospital because he wasn't supposed to know. The IV dripped. Harry was staring out the window as if he was searching for a reason as to why this was happening. He wanted to tell him that he had looked everywhere- there's no answer to that question. Then again, maybe he just forgot it.

He shifted in the bed and whimpered in pain when he felt the needle of the IV stuck in his hand. Harry turned around with wild eyes and fear written in between the lines of his face.

"Why didn't you tell me?," Harry croaked. Louis felt his soul die in a drawn out Greek tragedy.

"Why didn't I tell you what?," Louis stalled the first sad story of many. His body hurt and the only color he could see was red.

"Louis," Harry said in a warning tone. Louis stayed quiet. "Why didn't you tell me?," he repeated in a softer voice. Louis wished that he would cross the room and hold him like he did the last time they slept beside one another. When was that? He couldn't recall the last time he was in his flat.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Louis said honestly, looking down at his hands in his lap instead of meeting Harry's eye.

"Do you really think this hurts any less?," Harry asked in a voice that made him sound terribly small. That burned the inside of Louis's skull; Harry was big and important- a quasar drawing constellations with the dust of a million dying stars. He was anything but small.

"I didn't want it to hurt at all," Louis said, and the leak started again.

"Lou," he sighed and crossed the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and wiped Louis's eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. "It's okay, babe. I'm here," he said and Louis shook, red in his eyes burning around the edges and turning black. "I love you," he said, pulling Louis into him, folding him up in his arms. His breath was warm against Louis's neck, and he buried his sad face in Harry's jumper to hide the tears that made rivers down his cheeks.

"M'so in love with you," he sputtered into the soft fabric that hid Harry's chest. "Didn't want you to leave.”

"I'd never leave," Harry said softly, running his fingers through his soft swirls of caramel hair. "I'm right here," he whispered as Louis choked on a sob. "We're going to fight this together.”

Louis had never seen green look so beautiful.

 

***

 

His mother came down from Yorkshire and was fixing him a spot of tea.

"You know, you have medication so you may take it, darling," she said nonchalantly. He made a face when she brought him over the saucer and cup.

"The hospital tea is gross," he said and she rolled her eyes.

"You always were such a diva," she chided with a kind smile, setting it on the side table.

"I just appreciate good tea," he defended himself and she chuckled.

"Even when you aren't given the option," she said then paused before speaking again. "So Harry.”

"So Harry," he repeated and she sat on the edge of his bed.

"You two are together, then?," she asked but refused to meet his eye. He frowned.

"We are," he confirmed and she nodded more to herself than anything else, picking at a loose thread on the sterile white sheet. She looked out the window like Harry did, searching for something to say.

"He's a wonderful boy," she said finally but Louis could sense that she wasn't finished.

" _But_?," he urged her to continue.

"But-... But are you sure this is good for him?," she asked and he looked at the painting of flowers on the wall. Their roots grew past the frame and their petals had eyes that glared at him accusingly because he was wrong. He was always _so wrong_.

"No," he admitted, "but I'm not sure I ever knew what love felt like. I think this is my only chance." She didn't respond to that right away, just wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and grabbed the teacup as she rose from her seat.

"It's settled, then," she said, finally turning to meet his eye. "He stays.”

"I would hope that he does," Louis said as the corners of the room rounded so that the space was circular. The walls spun so quickly that the flowers were a smudge of watercolor and Louis was absolutely nothing. His mum had come down from Yorkshire and she was dumping perfectly good tea down the drain in the adjoining bathroom.

 

***

 

"They kinda look like stars," Harry said of the sparkles glittering across the curtain that separated the room into two. Louis shared his room with an old man named Nigel that didn't ever speak when the sun was out. He would wait until everyone was gone and Louis was presumably asleep to talk to his wife about his declining faith in God, but Gloria died 14 years ago and Louis couldn't remember the last time he slept. He also couldn't remember the color of the flowers on the peeling wallpaper in his kitchen. There were sailboats on the curtain and he thought Harry was a bit like a buoy, always keeping his head above water even when the waves got rough. The sparkles were a reflection of the cars parked outside way down below the 11th story window. Louis thought they looked like a reflection of the sun on the water that the sailboats tugged along on.

"I kinda feel like a star," Louis replied, stretching his hands in a reach towards the ceiling, flexing and relaxing his fingers.

"You _are_ a star," Harry replied, leaning down to press his soft lips to Louis's forehead.

"Because I'm dead?," he asked and Harry froze, lips suddenly cold against his skin. Louis wasn't dead but he wasn't quite alive. Was today Wednesday or January? The air smelled of roses and death.

"If you're dying, you sure are a trailblazer," Harry said, straightening up and crossing his arms over his chest, "You make death look like a good idea." He looked thinner, like Louis's present situation was taking a toll on him. He looked like he was decomposing from the inside out.

"You look decomposed," Louis blurted out, much like the first time they met when he embarrassed himself by saying _You look like a Disney Prince_. That moment seemed so far away now, like it had happened years before. It had only been a week as far as Louis could recall, though Harry measured said time as six and a half months when he retold the tale. Louis kept quiet so that Harry didn't cry again; the Prince only cried when he thought that Louis was asleep, but the King couldn't remember the last time he had slept. He couldn't remember the last time Harry had slept, either.

"Then I suppose I'll help the flowers grow," he said, and Louis remembered a fleeting moment in a patch of grass and the open sky stretched out wide and gray above their heads. Harry was searching through the clouds for something he never found. "I guess that's pretty wonderful.”

"Am I still a king?," he asked as the sparkles faded in the crest of a wave when the clouds covered the sun. Harry brushed his hair back away from his face with gentle fingers, his rings cool against Louis's warm skin.

"Always," he promised softly in a voice that wrapped around his heart like the ivy stood a chance in surviving the winter.

"You look like a Disney Prince," he said then, lowering his arms from where they ached in their position stretched out toward the closed off sky. He pulled Harry close then, arms encircling around his small waist. Harry laid beside him, tangling their legs together under the thin sheet and lacing his fingers through Louis's smaller ones. His green eyes looked blue as they fought not to spill tidal waves. Louis leaned forward and kissed him softly.

"Well I know you," he said against Louis's lips and green was all that he could see, "I fell in love with you once upon a dream." He changed his angle to deepen the kiss then, and that is when Louis connected the pieces of this seemingly impossible puzzle he had always struggled to understand. Harry was made of stars, his breath laced with stray comets and explosions of light and energy in spare quasars. He was celestial, a thousand galaxies in the span of his ring finger, and Louis felt his own lungs filling with stardust as he breathed in his excess shine. Harry was made up dead things, stars and Louis, and he was the fire that kept them all burning. Flowers were growing, new stars were being born into the sky long after their deaths, and Louis made dying look pretty where it shimmered as his tail as he shot across the night. Harry was the keeper of the universe, and Louis was just a star in another sky.

 

***

 

"I'm so sorry," said an old man with round wire glasses and a gray beard that hid the lower half of his rosy face. He wore a long white coat and Louis was sat upon a padded table on paper that crinkled under his bum, so he understood that he was a doctor. He looked vaguely familiar, like a distant relative at a holiday or reunion.

"Sorry for what?," Louis asked, swinging his feet and hitting them on the metal of the table with each backswing, creating a loud bang with each movement.

"Lou, babe, enough. You're making a racket-," Harry said in a hushed voice, reached for his boy's thigh when Louis jolted away.

" _No!,_ " he shrieked, the noise making Harry draw back suddenly.

“Louis-"

"I'm _fine_ ," Louis hissed, scooting back on the table even farther away from him, "I'm no damsel in distress! I don't need a prince to save me from monsters.”

"Mr. Tomlinson," the doctor began, and Louis reached out to stroke his beard.

"Louis, stop," Harry said, gently removing his small hand from the subsequently uncomfortable doctor's facial hair.

"You look like my grandad," Louis told him and Harry cringed.

"I'm sorry," he apologized on his boyfriend's behalf, who pouted out his lower lip with a stubborn cross of his arms over his chest.

"He _does!_ ," he argued, eyes fixated on the poster of the human ear on the wall. The ear was listening to the discordant clash of piano keys that clamored through Louis's head like an unwanted alarm. The words beneath the ear were melting off the page like teardrops of mascara painting portraits of spider legs that spelled out the words _EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY_. Louis remembered that he was dying as the room was painted bright orange. The walls were a pale blue merely seconds before- how odd! Orange tasted less like citrus and more like burning flesh. He fell back into his pit of despair like a plastic bag carried on a gust of wind. The walls of his personal hell were black; no shard of glass could shed light on the cracks in the burnt pavement and bleed anything but thick tar from the veins of his polluted internal city.

"The disease is progressing uncontrollably," Dr. Grandad said, eyes glued to his clipboard. "There's not much more we can do. I'm sorry.”

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?," Harry said angrily. Louis looked at him curiously; he seldom used his tongue as a weapon. It was like a dog standing on its hind legs or an angel learning how to yield an AK-47. "You've got him doped up on God knows how much bloody medication and you're telling me it hasn't done _shit?_ ," he grated out. The doctor looked nervous, like he was afraid of what Harry would do next. Louis lost track of the conversation, oblivious to what exactly they were discussing, but with the way his jaw clenched and the fire roared furiously in his eyes, he hoped that the angel would pull the trigger.

"Please, Mr. Styles," the man pleaded with the angel. He suddenly looked very old. Louis thought of his mother. She had crows' feet at the outer corners of her eyes and worry lines on her forehead that appeared when she raised her eyebrows. She was getting old too. Everyone around him was aging even as he decayed, and it hit him: the world would continue to turn when he was a vegetable, or even better, fertilizer for a flowerbed. When he was gone, Harry would take a breath and create a new universe for himself. Maybe there, he would find another broken soul to attempt to put back together.

He watched as the vein in Harry's neck bulged out with the force behind his words, though he could make no sense of them. His shouts and angry pleading all sounded like a guitar that was slightly out of tune trying to play "Wonderwall" by Oasis. Louis hated that song. Oh, what he would do to die a little more quickly.

 

***

 

He sat at another steel table with the same girl whom had mediated the last endless series of tests he was to go through today. She had kind brown eyes and her curly auburn hair silvered at the roots. Her voice was gentle but stern in its orders, asking her questions and following his responses with  _Good, love_ when he took too long to recall instances that should come to him immediately and _It's alright, no worries_ when he found himself to be clueless in a way that was very much worrisome.

She would show him pictures pasted onto index cards and he would have to name them. He could identify some, like _cat_ and _house_ , but lost his speech when it came to _football_ and _birdcage_. It was news to him when she informed him that he had played such a sport since he was a young boy and he was living inside of such an entrapping structure at this very moment.

Next, she gave him cards with sentences that he would read back to her. Sentences turned into paragraphs, paragraphs formed into pages, and pages turned into aimless lines and smudges dancing across the paper. She patted his arm and told him that he was doing _Absolutely wonderful_ , but he sensed the pity in her voice. He was void of any hope.

When she showed him a card with a wheel of the major colors and pointed to green, he couldn't put a label to it. He thought it started with H, but he couldn't remember the rest.

 

***

He could still lick a postage stamp but always moved to put it on the left corner of the envelope. Harry tried not to look frustrated each time he did it after countless attempts to correct him. He always did, though.

He couldn't remember the address of his flat but that's okay, he was told. He could only remember one room in his childhood home, the front room that looked out at the road where he would sit for hours watching cars drive by. It had pink frilly curtains that looked like ladies' lingerie. Harry would look lovely swaddled in pink lace.

"You would look lovely in pink lace," Louis said, twirling around in the wheelie desk chair. They were in a cold room with many stainless steel fixtures and tools that he didn't know the uses of.

He knew that the vampires lived here; they sucked his blood through tiny straws into a handful of tubes and traded such a loss for a cookie and juice. The wafer tasted like like a cigarette butt.

"You don't think I'd look like a loofa?," Harry mused him, bringing his spinning to a halt with his foot. Louis pouted at the sudden end to his festivities.

"You always look like a loofa," he lied, poking his tongue out at his larger half. It was in moments like these, rare and fleeting, that it almost seemed like he was okay. Harry looked at him and saw the universe folded into a single person, and he figured that's why he was falling apart. His soul was too vast to be pressed into the outline of his body, so it was reacting to the pressure. It exploded in deep reds, bright blues, and vibrant greens. Purple was thoughtful and indigo was madness, all painted upon the canvas of the world which tore apart with each brushstroke Louis made with every intake of breath. He made death look like a spectacular adventure.

"I thought I was a Disney Prince?," Harry winked and Louis looked at him strangely, smile twisting slightly with confusion.

"Who told you that?," he asked and Harry pretended that it was all in light teasing. He played it off to be part of their game of making small digs at each other in exchange for kisses and pecks, but he knew that it wasn't. Louis didn't remember.

Sometimes he couldn't recall his mother's maiden name or his youngest sister's face. Once he forgot how to spell _Tomlinson_ and often couldn't bring himself to tie his shoes. Never once in between these moments of flaw in the records did he forget his Prince, though. And now?

Harry knew, in that moment, that this was the end. For the first time, he wept openly when he knew that Louis was very much awake. Louis could not remember the last time he slept.

 

***

 

"I'm.. I'm sorry," the old man began and Harry sighed, knee bouncing wildly where he sat with his head in his hands. Louis felt sadness fill his lungs, watching Harry come apart in front of him. Harry sighed heavily at the knowledge that, somehow, they could descend further into hell. He was green, but lately, he was a TV show that only played in black and white.

"What else could possibly go wrong? _Really?_ ," Harry asked in voice thick with exhaustion. "I've run out of ideas. I wasn't even aware that this could possibly get much worse.”

"He-... Mr. Tomlinson doesn't really-... he's not going to last very long," the bearded man said. He looked like Santa Claus, so rosy and round. Louis tilted his head, the words spoken by the other people in the room just static in his ears. Their faraway voices were like echoes in the mountains that brought on avalanches down below. Louis stood at the bottom, looking up at his impending doom. The sun expanded and swallowed him up, spitting the Earth back out and burning him alive. He welcomed her seething hands that left holes in his skin and embraced her fiery heart. He wished that he could be more like her, lighting up the lives of those whom loved him instead of draining them of such energies.

"You-.. What are you saying?," Harry asked carefully, stilling his leg and raising his head from where it was bowed. His guarded gaze reached the apprehensive one of Dr. Rowe, whom looked between the notes on his clipboard and the green eyes that burnt holes through the lenses of his glasses with their intensity.

"He hasn't got very long to live, Mr. Styles," he said gently, "I'm _so_ sorry.”

"No," Harry said quietly, shaking his head and rising from his seat. "There's something else you can do. Anything- please. Just- please keep him _alive_ ," he pleaded, voice going up a decibel with each word. Perhaps an increase in volume would help God hear the conversation.

"We've done everything we can," the doctor said helplessly, offering the palms of his hands as if to show that he was innocent. "I'm sorry.”

"So that's it, then?," Harry asked, throwing his hands up as his blood pressure spiked. "All of this heartache for _nothing?_ For him to die without knowing his own fucking _name?_ He's going to die a shell of the man I knew, and all you are is _sorry?_ " He was screaming now, face red and that same vein bulging in the side of his neck. Louis thought it looked like sadness rather than anger. He stayed quiet and watched the colors that coated a model of the human heart melt into a puddle of black. _Everything is temporary_ he heard through the incessant buzzing in his ears. He nodded in agreement with the disembodied voice as Harry ripped out his soul and let it fly upwards towards something eternal.

"Please, sir-“

"No, _you_ please," Harry shouted, jamming his finger into the doctor's chest as tears restricted his vision. "He's going to _die_ and you're going to tell me that the most anyone can do is sit back and watch it happen?," he cried. “ _Bullshit!_ "

"I'm sorry, I ca-“

"Go to hell," Harry snapped, stalking across the room to grab Louis by the wrist. The old man watched them with sad eyes and Louis wanted to hug him. Santa was supposed to be jolly at all time, why on Earth would he ever be in despair?

"Where are we going?," Louis asked as he was dragged out of the doctor's office and towards the car.

" _Away,_ " Harry said and by his tone, Louis knew not to question it. He got into the passenger side and Harry drove down unfamiliar roads past exit signs for towns with strange names. At exit 17, two hours into the thick silence that had enveloped the car, he pulled off to the side of the road. He bowed his head against the steering wheel and sobbed for what felt like a very long time.

Louis was unsure of how to react so he didn't; he sat in his seat with his hands in his lap, only sneaking a glance over at the weeping boy every few minutes. Finally, Harry straightened up and wiped his eyes with his collar.

" _Hey,_ " Louis said softly, and Harry winced at the sound.

"Yeah?," he replied, still hiding his face behind his shirt, as if the thin material could protect him from the implosion of his happily ever after.

"I know you," he said and Harry peeked his red rimmed eyes out to peer at his other half hesitantly, "I rode the bus with you once upon a dream."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!! this is kinda longer than what i usually write, so if you read it all the way through, thank you for doing that :) you're awesome. also, if you liked this enough i might start posting longer stuff??? YAY hope you liked this. additionally, im sorry that i only seem to write sad things. im the worst when it comes to heartbreak, i've been told.  
> if you wanna say hello or yell at me for making you sad, you can find me on [tumblr](http://www.wellingtwink.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/livskialmighty/) !!!


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